For the Last Time
by caffeineaddict13
Summary: The battle is over because Bella’s already a monster. Jacob-centric drabble.


**A/N: **Yes, I know it's been a while. The truth is I've just had a lot going on, which sounds like a bad excuse (and maybe it is), but whatever. I'm attempting to do NaNoWriMo, which isn't turning out too well because, let's face it, I have no patience. Usually why all my stories end up being oneshots.

On a side note, I did see Twilight on Friday and…well…just PM me if you want to know, I guess.

Enjoy the drabble.

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"Until your heart stops beating, Bella. I'll be here — fighting. Don't forget that you have options."  
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- Jacob Black; Chapter 15, Eclipse

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Bella's voice is the one thing that's always scared him.

As a big brown wolf, Jacob takes pride in being fearless, almost to the point of recklessness. Running after vampires, chewing away metal wires for game and jumping on top of the backs of the strongest creatures – all of that was child's play. Jacob's own entertainment comes not from Xbox and basketball but bloody knuckles and quick-healing scars; it bothers him, really, that he can't even get a real battle wound. At least he'd have something to show off then.

But Jacob never truly felt pain until those bittersweet afternoons where he laid his heart on the line. When Jacob said Bella was mean, he wasn't lying. He sees her broken-down, marionette kind of pout and he apologizes, of course, but the truth was out there anyway, thick and foggy in the Washington clouds. It's not really her fault that the cruelest girl in the world is the one that everyone's in love with – after all, he could have stopped himself a long time ago.

But Jacob always liked a challenge.

The Alpha wolf is no Edward. He's not so masochistic that he'd want to kiss someone he'd like to kill – Jacob's not stupid and he doesn't need Bella to tell him that that's _exactly _what it's like. And it's not really the reason Jacob knows she'd be better off with him, either. It's the fact that Jacob doesn't need to save her for her to be saved – the fact that through his easy laugh and his rusty word games they managed to form something in the deadened world around them. Even with the leftover tears and the holes like Swiss cheese drilling through her heart, Jacob was able to fill her cheeks with the same blush that would have made the Cullens thirsty, invoke that laugh that sounded half schoolgirl and half lawyer, chuckling at a private joke that was somehow to mature for him to ever understand.

And, yes, Jacob knows that he's fighting a battle that's already over. He knew that the second he kissed her – and it wasn't because she punched him or wouldn't admit that she loved him back. No, Jacob knew that the slow burning she blamed on his skin was really love trying to find its way back to her, trying to make her realize that real love, true love, isn't always the fireworks and dazzle that Edward made it out to be. Some love is made of soft hands and miracles, healing scars and talking just to pass the time. Jacob's love is part joke and sort of beautiful, and Bella doesn't seem to understand that this is just as real as Edward's sparkling immortality.

The battle is over because Bella's already a monster.

Jacob doesn't need to count her heartbeats to know that she might as well be dead already. She made her choice without the options, took her pen and slashed it quick and red over the tiny black box, leaving Jacob empty-handed because his vote didn't even count. Bella stubbornness is something Jacob had always thought adorable, but now, in this horrible, over-used cliché of a high school romance he sees that there is nothing worse than young love – which is actually kind of hypocritical since he's sixteen all the same, even with the dark eyes and muscles.

Someday Jacob hopes that he'll be able to forget all of this.

He knows it's unlikely, because even disregarding the super werewolf senses, no one ever _really_ forgets their first love, no matter how bad it ends. And Jacob may be sixteen but he's older than Edward on the inside, a teenage boy going on two hundred, even without the heartbreak he never really deserved.

Because he can't ever really hate her. Even when he's quivering like the old Jacob, her Jacob, the one that was skinny and too-tall, full of hopes and smiles, even when he's scared because her voice is telling him No, he looks at her and sees that there's nothing that he can't love. There isn't a single bone in his body that isn't eternally grateful to Charlie for taking her in, to Billy for being his friend, to Edward for leaving so he could ever have the chance to get to know her.

And even when he's bleeding, Jacob thanks God that he's alive to see her die.

Because at least he gets to see her one last time.

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**END**


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